Prosecutors in South Africa indicate they plan to appeal Pistorius outcome

As reported in this article, headlined "South Africa prosecutors to appeal against Pistorius sentence," it appears that the Blade Runner is not done running from serious legal difficulties. Here are the bascis:

South Africa’s state prosecutor plans to appeal against Oscar Pistorius’s culpable homicide conviction and five-year prison sentence for shooting his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, it said on Monday.

Nathi Mncube, spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority, said the NPA expected to file papers in the next few days. Until the papers were filed, it would not announce the grounds for appeal, it said.

But Pistorius’s conviction for culpable homicide has drawn criticism from some legal commentators. After the athlete, a double-amputee who starred at the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics, was sentenced last week, there was more controversy when lawyers said he could serve as little as 10 months, or a sixth of the five-year term.

In South Africa, an appeal can only be made on a matter of law, “where we think . . . the judge made an error in interpretation and in the manner in which she applied the law to the facts”, Mr Mncube said.

Pistorius had been charged with premeditated murder after shooting Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and law graduate, four times through the locked toilet door in a bathroom at his home in the early hours of Valentine’s Day last year.   But Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled that the prosecution failed to show Pistorius had intent to kill, while saying there was “no basis on which this court could make inferences of why the accused would want to kill the deceased”. Instead, she appeared to believe Pistorius’s version of events, despite describing the 27-year-old as a “poor” and “evasive” witness.